This is the Blog for the PhD in Social Emotional Behavioral Health and Inclusive Education (PhD in SHIE) at the University of Vermont, College of Education and Social Sciences.
The Project RESILIENCY scholars of the inaugural cohort of the newly minted PhD in Special Education focused on Social Emotional and Behavioral Health and Inclusive Education (PhD in SHIE) are in the second semester of being all together as students on campus. In addition to our exciting coursework in Prevention Science Theory, Research Methods, Critical Issues is SEBH Policy, each scholar is engaging in supporting various faculty on a variety of research projects, teaching, reviewing licensure portfolios, and/or developing their own research questions, literature bases, writing practices and styles.
One thing we have found so far is that there is strength in numbers and we are better together. Almost instantly when we arrived on campus last autumn, a text chain was established, and we began our friendships and colleagueship. We text often throughout our days and weeks, about life, and school, and what the printer code is. We share GIFs to lighten the stress, we ask genuine questions and share resources and links. We give each other heads up when our mics are unmuted during our online classes, we remind each other in which room we are meeting. We check in when something extra is going on for any one of us. Which happens. Life happens. Through intentional care and communication, we are establishing an academic community rooted in relationships.
We are currently working on writing and presenting a research paper about how the collaborative efforts of this intentionally interdisciplinary team will evolve ideas and research and practice that could not have been created by any one of us alone. Our team comes from professional and personal backgrounds intentionally chosen to give us a variety of lenses through which to view the thorny issues in SEBH/SpEd/Higher Ed/Policy/ and public health.
We have been in a phase of self-organizing as we begin collaboration on writing and researching together. We have established weekly meetings during which our team meets to work on our “projects.” We spend time getting to know each other more, building relationships, and sharing ideas. We are currently using a shared leadership model, in which we intentionally rotate facilitation roles each week. We decided to begin our work together by zooming out, before we dive in. We spent almost a whole meeting giving each of us the floor to share about our knowledge base, hopes and dreams, and focuses of interest. We are also reading each other’s theoretical inventories, written as final papers for Prevention Science Theory last semester, and reconvening around the start of a theoretical compendium. Our current goals are multiple: write a paper about the intentional de-siloing of the fields of mental health, social work, public health and special and general education, prepare to present said paper at the New England Educational Research Association conference in April, produce this blog, move our paper forward into a publishable compendium intentionally linking multiple theoretical frameworks to support the social emotional and behavioral health of students, teachers and staff in the fields of special education. Big tasks, but we are together, we are supported, and we got this.
The SHIE blog will publish monthly on the goings on of the students in the PhD SHIE program, as well as periodic pop-up images and notes for fun. If you have any questions for us, don’t hesitate to comment below. If you are interested in learning more about the program, check out this link: